TOBA TEK SINGH, May 28: The naming of a road through a resolution of district council after the late Chaudhry Fazal Karim, the father of Intelligence Bureau deputy director Chaudhry Babar Sikandar Warriach, was a clear violation of Section 9 of Roads and Streets Rules, 1981.

This was claimed on Tuesday by Gojra union council No 14 Nazim Syed Hasnat Mahmood Shah in a letter to district Nazim.

He quoted the section which said: “A road or street can only be named after a national hero, the head of a friendly country, armed forces personnel who was martyred or rendered great service for the country, a person who rendered service in the Pakistan movement, or a person who served the area and had died.”

Mr Shah said the road was already named after the late Khan Bahadur Sir Mahdi Shah, his grandfather, who was elected four times a member of Indian legislative council and was the founder chairman of the Gojra Municipal Committee. The late Sir Mahdi was a philanthropist who built a number of schools and hospitals in the area, he added.

He claimed that the late Chaudhry Fazal Karim rendered no service for the people of the area.

He demanded of the district Nazim and council members to cancel the union council resolution and restore the road’s name after the late Sir Mahdi.

When contacted, a district council official said the movers of the resolution, which was adopted by the district council in its session on April 13, Tahir Pervez and Zubair Asghar, had stated that according to the revenue record of 1933 the road was not named after any personality while the late Chaudhry Karim had great services in rehabilitation of migrants in the area in 1947 and had also worked in the Pakistan movement.

Meanwhile, two employees of the highways department were seen guarding the signboards of Chaudhry Karim because earlier Gojra tehsil Nazim Chaudhry Khalid Javed Warriach, the opponent of the late Chaudhry Karim family, had removed the board with the objection that only tehsil council was authorized to name any road under the rules.

Later, the tehsil council had unanimously approved a resolution to name the road after the late Sir Mahdi Shah contrary to the resolution of district council which named the road after the late Chaudhry Karim.

LOAN RECOVERY DEFERRED: The Agriculture Development Bank of Pakistan (ADBP) has deferred the recovery of farm loans from the cultivators of 37 villages of Gojra tehsil which were declared calamity-hit by the Punjab government.